The beatings continued even later, when Filichkin was taken to Kiev, even on the way there. “To prevent me from sleeping, they would beat me in the neck with stokes and stabbed with a bayonet. I asked them: “Why are you doing this?” They replied: “We are just bored.”
Who were the torturers of a DPR serviceman?
“There were youngsters of 19 years old, ultras, football hooligans. For them, fighting and killing people is just for fun. Girls who were regarded as medical staff participated in the torture,” Filichkin explained to RIA Novosti.
In the ranks of the “Azov” and “Right Sector”* battalions there were recently amnestied criminals: the new Kiev authorities urgently needed people to join the ranks of the “volunteer battalions”, and the prisoners apparently did not care which side they would take – they just wanted to rob and torture.
“They boasted that just a month (ago. – Ed.) they all were in prison, and then they were told that they could do the same thing as they used to do before, but in Donbass: “Even if we kill you, we will not be punished.” Many showed IDs of the Interior Ministry officers … “I already have two cars,” they boasted. That is how Filichkin described the communication with his torturers.
He was brought to Kiev in such a poor condition that the temporary detention centre refused to accept the prisoner fearing that he would die in a cell and the responsibility would fall on the prison staff. “My ribs and my leg were broken,” Filichkin said.
“IN MARIUPOL, FROM SIX TO EIGHT PEOPLE WENT MISSING EVERY DAY”
But he still got off lightly: Kirill knows that in the Mariupol airport there was a burial site for those who were killed in the “library”, who could not survive after the torture or were shot by the wardens.
“They dug a pit, threw corpses into it. When the pit was full, they poured concrete there and covered it with soil,” Filichkin retells what he heard from his eyewitness friends, including those who were forced to carry the dead bodies.
In particular, eyewitnesses claim that there is such a burial site right next to the takeoff runway. But it is difficult to say how many victims are buried there.
“In 2014, in the midst of the conflict, from six to eight people went missing in Mariupol every day. Some of them returned. Nobody knows anything about the rest. People (in captivity – Ed.) took out the instep supports and cut their veins, because many people could not endure it,” Filichkin added.
In Mariupol, “Azov” battalion members would stop buses with workers and pulled out anyone that seemed suspicious.
One day, international organizations will find these burial sites, find the names of the dead and punish those involved in war crimes, Filichkin hopes.
As for himself, he spent a total of 3.5 years in prison. On June 8, 2015, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and on December 27, 2017, he was released as part of the exchange.